Technologies

TMC

The Traffic Message Channel utilises the well known FM radio signal for trans-mission of digitally coded traffic and weather information. This enables your navi-gation system to take traffic congestions, road closures and other problems into consideration and avoid them when necessary. The TMC service is continuously online and covers most European countries and major metropolitan areas in the U.S.A. Usage is free of costs in many countries. You find more information about TMC at the sources listed in our FAQ.

Our devices receive and preprocess TMC data and provide the decoded traffic messages to your navigation device, enabling dynamic - traffic dependent - navigation. Traffic messages received via TMC are continu-ously updated and provide more detailed information than the well known audio broadcasting - often up to 30 minutes before the messages are broadcast in the radio program.

Fresh concepts - intelligence embedded

Our TMC receivers are equipped with powerful processors, handling most of the station- and message management tasks without stressing the navigation processor. In addition to releasing the processor of your mobile device this leads to further advantages:

Starting earlier

In our devices message reception is initiated independently from the navigation software. The messages received are buffered and ready to be requested by the navigation software. Thus the system has already collected a bunch of messages before navigation starts and can be taken into account right from the beginning of your journey.

Finding faster

Search for the best TMC station in range is performed by powerful algorithms in our devices, independently from the operational status of the navigation software. This reduces communication with the navigation device and the result is impressive: identification of the station with best TMC reception is usually done within 4 seconds. This is a fraction of the time other devices need.

Knowing the best station

Even if you leave the range of one station during your journey, our devices retain control. Specialised algorithms assure that the station fitting best is known before leaving the actual one, enabling an instant message reception from the succeeding station.

Communicating safer

Due to our new system architecture TMC data are pulled over the serial line by the navigation software in-stead of being pushed by the receiver unit. This means a release for navigation processing as there is no need to remain in reception ready mode. Message collection by our devices continues even if the connec-tion to the navigation system is interrupted or the system is not operative. The messages received are stored for delivery upon request from the navigation system.

and being better informed

As a user, you will realize only one important thing: Your navigation system is provided very fast with a complete overview of the traffic situation and guides you into the right direction right from the beginning of your ride.

Patents

For our newly developed technologies we have applied for international patents.

Worth to be mentioned are new communication methods between TMC receiver and the mobile computer, methods for fast and accurate station search as well as receiver integration into mobile devices.

Applying new communication methods enables us to transmit TMC data and GPS data via a common serial line without infringing existing intellectual property rights of other market participants.